"An alphabet of disappearance"

by Eurozine Review

"du" signs off an era in publishing; "Osteuropa" takes stock of post-election Ukraine and Poland; "Reset" fathoms the gulf between the American and European Left; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Oslo) criticizes the gullibility of Norwegian news reporters; "Nova Istra" proclaims the essay the literary genre of the future; and "Lettre Internationale" (Denmark) wants to make artists into journalists.

British Socialism and American Romanticism

by Mark Bevir

Although much has been said about the influence of Carlyle and Ruskin on British socialists, the influence of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman has been neglected. American romanticism influenced British socialism through three direct channels: first, the wandering scholar Thomas Davidson who inspired the Fellowship of the New Life; second, the poet Edward Carpenter who dominated the Sheffield Socialist Society and influenced other local groups; and, third, the unitarian minister John Trevor who founded the Labour Church movement. Through these channels, American romanticism acted as an important source of the ethical socialism of the Independent Labour Party.

Democratic Governance: Systems and Radical Perspectives

by Mark Bevir

How might we think about democratic governance? This paper distinguishes between system governance and radical democracy. Systems governance borrows the language of radical democracy while missing its spirit. It advocates increased participation through networks because new institutionalists suggest networks are an efficient means of service delivery. It advocates increased consultation to build consensus because communitarians suggest consensus is needed for effective political institutions. System governance is, then, a top-down discourse based on the alleged expertise of social scientists. Radical democrats concentrate instead upon the self-government of citizens. Instead of the incorporation of established groups in networks, they promote a pluralism within which aspects of governance are handed over to associations in civil society. And instead of consultation prior to decision-making, they promote a dialogue in which citizens play an active role in making and implementing public policy.

Marriage, Motherhood and Masculinity in the Global Economy: Reconfigurations of Personal and Economic Life

by Naila Kabeer

The Subject of Religion: Lacan and the Ten Commandments

by Julia R. Lupton

Lacan's references to the Ten Commandments reveal the Decalogue not as a repressive text of negative prohibitions, but rather as a foundational template of subjective relationships to enjoyment (jouissance) that maps the subject's relations to the symbolic order and to the real.

The Mythical Beginnings of Intellectual Property

by Jessica M. Silbey

 

Six reasons the Hollywood strike could change the 2008 election

by Travis Daub

 

The global drug war: beyond prohibition, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian is at Universidad de San Andrés in ArgentinaHe earned a doctorate in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University school of advanced international studies, and lived, researched and taught in Colombia from 1981-98

 

 

Charles Taylor, "A Secular Age"

by Amardeep

I have Charles Taylor's new book, A Secular Age, on the shelf, and will start to tackle it here soon -- probably not in as much detail as I have been looking at Ramachandra Guha, but definitely in some detail. One of the things I like about Taylor is his ability to bring non-western perspectives into his thinking about secularization, showing just how complicated (and often intertwining) the

 

In Defense of Substantive Democracy

by Amardeep

This post is a response of sorts to Abhi's thought-provoking comments at Sepia Mutiny on Musharraf's State of Emergency, and what he sees as the possible benefits of dictatorship in certain limited conditions. Abhi's post, as I read it, was a thought experiment, not necessarily a political program -- and this is a somewhat speculative thought experiment as well (these ideas are not set in stone).

Christmas, Cash, and Commodities

by Gregory McNamee

Thanksgiving puts a smile on the face of cranberry farmers, poultry farmers, sweet-potato farmers, and bookies. Valentine’s Day gives the executives at Hallmark a warm fuzzy feeling. Come Mother’s Day, florists are the happiest people in town, having jacked up their prices by orders of magnitude that would bring a federal suit down on any other industry. Easter is a holiday beloved of observant Christians—but also of chocolatiers and confectioners and egg farmers, to say nothing of the evil trolls who manufacture the cellophane grass that lines environmentally unfriendly baskets.

 

Marcia Pally: The Transatlantic Muslim Divide

Compared with the tension that exists in Muslim communities across Europe, America’s Muslims are a rather contented lot. The key reason is a pluralist public sphere and an emphasis on economic, political, and educational participation, in contrast to Europe's insistence on symbolic assimilation.

James D. Wolfensohn: Farewell to Development’s Old Divides

The notion of a divide between the rich north from the poor and developing south – for years a central concept in thinking about economic development – has been rendered obsolete by unprecedented levels of global growth and interdependence in the past two decades. As a result, the north-south divide has been replaced by a four-tier world with its own set of challenges.

 

Meaning, Truth, and Phenomenology

by Mark Bevir

This essay approaches Derrida through a consideration of his writings on Saussure and Husserl. Derrida is right to insist, following Saussure, on a relational theory of meaning: words do not have a one to one correspondence with their referents. But he is wrong to insist on a purely differential theory of meaning: words can refer to reality within the context of a body of knowledge. Similarly, Derrida is right to reject Husserl's idea of presence: no truths are simply given to consciousness. But he is wrong to reject the very idea of objective knowledge: we can defend a notion of objective knowledge couched in terms of a comparison of rival bodies of theories. The essay concludes by considering the implications of the preceding arguments for the enterprise of phenomenology.

Roundtable: "Disaster Capitalism: The New Economy of Catastrophe"

by Reflection Cafe

 

Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?

by Reflection Cafe